1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the technology for collecting information exhibiting the movement situation of products to offer the information thus collected. More particularly, the invention relates to the technology for moving, together with a product, an apparatus for acquiring the information of the place where the product is kept to collect information exhibiting the movement situation of the product, and the technology for offering and utilizing the information which is acquired by the above-mentioned technology and which exhibits the movement situation of the product.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, many products from the electrical products down are manufactured in the factories and packed up with the package members to be shipped. Recently, the products are directly delivered from the factories to consumers in some cases. In many cases, however, the products are forwarded to consumers through the intermediate processes such as storehouses, wholesalers and retailers. That is, the factories carry out solely the production. Other traders take partial charge of the distribution and the selling.
The adoption of such a procedure may also be said to be more effective in terms of the partial charge of a role than the above-mentioned direct delivery. On the other hand, there arises the problem that the stagnating of the products occurs in the intermediate process through which the products which have been shipped are forwarded to consumers.
Such stagnating of the products in the intermediate process is preferably dissolved from a viewpoint of forwarding the products for a short period of time. In addition, it is desired to reduce the stagnating from a viewpoint as well of compressing the stock of the products. For this reason, many traders who offer the products discuss what the physical distribution should be from the necessity of realizing the reduction of the cost in the physical distribution, and the speedy offer of the products. In order to achieve this, it is required to collect the information exhibiting the distributive flow of the products to grasp the movement situation of the products after shipping. Then, it is desired to offer the information which relates to the movement of the products and which is easy to be utilized.
Generally, after the products have been shipped to be delivered to the distribution traders, the maker can be aware of the situation after having shipped the products on the basis of the products sent back, the user registration and the like. However, it is difficult to be aware of to where the products have been transported, where and how the products-stagnate until the products have been delivered to consumers.
As the means for being aware of the situation of the products after shipping, typically, there is a method of inquiring the intermediate trader about the stock situation of the products using the telephone or the like. In this method, however, the number of stocked products in that intermediate trader at a certain time point is only found out to the utmost. Therefore, in that method, the actual movement situation such as from where to where the products have been moved, where how many days the products were present is not grasped with respect to the individual products.
In addition, it is conceivable that with respect to the products which have been stocked/taken in/out of the storehouse or the like, the products are individually confirmed whenever having been stocked/taken in/out of the storehouse or the like in order to investigate the movement situation of the products. However, the work of confirming individually the products which have been stocked/taken in/out of the storehouse or the like in large quantities becomes a large burden for the intermediate traders. Therefore, since it is difficult to obtain the cooperation of the intermediate traders, the realization thereof is not easily carried out.
In addition, even if the investigation thereof can be carried out, it is required to sum up the information which is used to grasp the places where the products are kept, and the movement situation to produce the document therefor. As a result, however, there arises the problem that it costs much labor.
In the light of the foregoing, the present invention has been made in order to solve the above-mentioned problems associated with the prior art, and it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide the technology for collecting information exhibiting the movement situation of the products to offer the information thus collected. In addition, it is another object of the present invention to provide the technology for offering the information exhibiting the movement situation of the products in the form of being easy to be utilized.
In order to attain the above-mentioned objects, the present invention employs a position information acquiring apparatus for receiving an electric wave to acquire the position information, exhibiting the place where the product is kept, on the basis of the received signal and also to record successively the position information thus acquired. This apparatus is operated in the state of being able to be moved together with the objective matter of conveyance to receive an electric wave to acquire successively the position information.
In addition, in order to attain the above-mentioned objects, according to the present invention, position history information of the product which is stored in a storage device and which contains time information containing a date and information exhibiting the position where the product is kept at the time of interest is read out, and on the basis of the position information contained in the position history information, a map of a part in which the position exhibited by the position information of interest is contained is retrieved from map information which is previously prepared, and also an output for showing visibly the resultant partial map and a symbol with which the position information contained in the position history information is shown on the map is carried out.